Inorganic Chemistry for JEE

(Advanced): Part 2, 3rd edition K. S.

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Made us creatures of its own,
Charmed us to its ancient moods,
Tuned us to its sombre tone;
Whispered in the tangled deeps,
Showed us, in the twilight rays,
Secrets that the noonday keeps,
Wonders lost on homely ways.
Where the forest creatures led
Lay our path;—the fox that crept
Through the fern, or, overhead,
Squirrels that before us leapt,
These we followed, or perchance
Startled herds that past us flew,
Leaving but an antler’s glance
Through the tree trunks for a clue.
In their wildness something stirred
Eager passion of the chase,
Made us foes of beast and bird,
Spoilers of the nesting-place;
Yet their wildness we could share,
We were creatures of the wood,
With them reached the hidden lair
Not pursuing, but pursued.
These, the wild and timid things,
Kinship in our hearts awoke,—
These we knew; but whisperings
Came of strange unearthly folk,—
Dwarfs, and Leprechauns and elves,—
Seen by others, not ourselves;
Though at times a cry’s escape,
Or a gliding shadow-shape,
Proved them near us as they stole
Out of sight from hole to hole;
Or when from the unknown track
Half afraid we hastened back,
While the night began to close
Round us and the wind arose:
Then throughout the forest stirred
Old enchantments, and we heard
Rushing wings of phantom hosts
Overhead; and whispering ghosts,
Outcasts of forgotten tombs
Wandering through the forest glooms,
Crossed our path; and demons grim
Hung on every creaking limb.
Then how glad were we to near
Homely ways and human cheer,
When, beyond the forest bounds,
Once again familiar sounds
Reached us, and the end of day
Glimmered on horizons grey,
Over uplands far away.

Golden morrows showed no mark,

Glittering pathways gave no trace,
Where those legions of the dark
Made their noonday hiding-place.
Where the elfin hosts had rushed,
Where had fallen the wizard bane
Not a flower had been crushed,
Never dewdrop had a stain.

Then an idle way we took

Where the little wandering brook,
Overflowing mossy wells,
Flashing out of twilight shades,
Beckoned us to secret dells,
Led us into fairy glades.
Here the sunlight filtered through
Woven trellises of blue,
Dropping from a sky unseen
Into hollows golden-green.
Jays, in azure flashes, slid
Out of hollows where they hid;
Golden crested wrens among
Feathery boughs of larches hung;
 y g g;
Gentle winds in dreaming firs
Touched æolian dulcimers;
Dancing shadows fell across
Fairy rings on floors of moss;
Over rocks of weathered grey
Tapestries of wild rose lay;
Here the forest’s magic spells
Hung on dappled foxglove bells;
Here the dreams of twilight pale,
Stealing out to golden light,
Shaped themselves in petals frail
Clothed themselves in blossoms white.

Not within the golden dell

Could we rest:—the wild and lone
Laid on us a stronger spell,
Called us to a world unknown.
Down untrodden paths would break
Gleams remote, that still foretold
New discoveries to make,
Always greater than the old.
There, beyond us, never gained,
Lay the regions of our quest,
There our wonderlands remained
Unbeholden, unpossessed;—
Wonderlands no truth could mar,
Dreams no wakening could blot,
Lovelier because so far,
Real because we found them not.
 FIRST LOVE

Our treasures hardly seemed our own,

And barren our adventures were
Till comrades shared them:—one alone
I could not share.

We had no aims nor joys apart,

No secret we could long withhold:
One only, hidden in my heart,
I kept untold.

I see the little village church,

The faces that we used to know,
The parson in his pulpit-perch,
The clerk below;
The bare grey walls, the windows dim,
The crystal stains that filtered through
The golden wings of seraphim,
The robes of blue.

A sudden ray of sunshine fell

Soft on a little maiden’s hair,
And, lo! a joy I dared not tell,
And could not share.

My treasure hardly seemed my own,

My secret joy a burden grew,
In fear lest others had been shown
Its wonder too.

Her heart my secret never guessed;

And she is gone,—I know not where,
And now with those who loved her best
The loss I share.
 THE WORLD’S END

Where did they end,—those pathways wild and lone

Through the dark forest? Lay some shore unknown
Beyond them, where the wind first taught the trees
The sweet sad voices of the murmuring seas?
Oh, whither did they call? The long arcades
Led ever to remoter, dimmer shades;
And from the farthest crest a pathway dipped
Down to some lonelier aisle or darker crypt.
Dear were the open fields to us, and dear
The homely path, the sound of human cheer;
But ’twas the way no foot of man had worn,
The forest’s undiscoverable bourne,
That made our world so wide, its end so far:
And when, in the evening through the trees, a star
Shone o’er the darkening solitudes, it seemed
Nearer than those long quests of which we dreamed.

One day we wandered farther than before

Through leafy maze and dusky corridor
Into the forest’s heart, when far away
We saw a low horizon line of grey
Where all before was dark; and by degrees
Through wider openings among the trees
The daylight grew; and we who thought we stood
Deep in the hidden cloisters of the wood
Were at its end,—only at last to find
A world like that which we had left behind.
There, out beyond us in the evening gold,
Lay homely meadowlands, and farm and fold:
The path we followed to the unknown shore
Led in the end but to some cottage door.

There, with the forest’s end, those regions vast

That childhood showed us into dreamland passed
That childhood showed us, into dreamland passed.
The great world was beyond us; far away,
Over the hills, the lands we knew not lay,—
But others knew them! Now the secret clue
We followed melted in the noonday’s blue,
Or hid among the stars. That broken road
Taught us the boundaries of our abode,—
The gulf ’twixt heaven and earth. A bridge unseen
The hope or faith of man might build between
Our home on earth and some celestial shore;
But ’twas for us no longer to explore
The paths of brave adventure which we trod
In childhood, to the unknown lands of God.
 YOUTH

The child is not the dreamer; but the youth.

No dream can lend enchantment to the truth
In childhood, and no glamour from afar
Can make its paths more wondrous than they are.
Nor was there any need for us to dream
When every field and flower and hill and stream
Fulfilled the heart’s desire, and hope could feign
No love or joy our world did not contain.

The dreamer is the youth who finds the ends

Of paths that once were endless, who ascends
The peaks that once in heaven seemed to glow,
Only to see the glory spread below;
For whom the rose of eve, the morning’s gold,
The starlight shining over field and fold,
The voice of wind and wave, the wild flowers’ scent,
Waken a want where once they brought content.
He dreams: the vanished wonder that those days
Of childhood showed him on familiar ways
He cherishes,—he dreams that they exist
On pathways still afar or somewhere missed.
Where knowledge from his world the beauty stole,
The inborn light of beauty in his soul
Relumes it, and endows a world unseen
With all the splendour of the might-have-been.
Pleasures beguile him, and that light within
Lends its own beauty to the face of sin,
Or flares to fire of passion that consumes
The very loveliness its light illumes.
He dreams of love, and every pathway’s bend
Holds him expectant, every journey’s end
Gives promise of the tryst, the hour supreme
That shall reveal the maiden of his dream.
Hi f ith i i hi lf h ld f
His faith is in himself: he would reform
The world with love, and take his Heaven by storm.
The great adventure calls him: he would build
On earth his visions, and his heart is thrilled
Those labours to complete which God left unfulfilled.
 NEW HORIZONS

Never was there path our childhood used to roam

So long it led not in the evening home;

Nor could the magic of the unknown track

Prevail against the hearth that called us back.

Over the same hill-tops, wild-rose or grey,

Our evening and our twilight always lay;

And when the night fell all the unknown stars

Grew homely shining through our window bars.

Now we have fared to the country o’er the hill,

And unknown journeys lie beyond us still;—

Ways unadventured, countless paths to roam,

But none that leads us in the evening home.

Onward, not homeward, some adventure calls

With every dawn, and every evening falls

Over new horizons, wild-rose or grey,

And old stars shining on the unknown way

Strange look and far, not those we saw of old

Safe moored in haven skies above our fold.
 THE QUEST OF YOUTH

Year by year the hills of blue

That bounded our homeland nearer drew,
One by one the old enchantments
Passed away from the paths we knew.

Many a boon the old days brought,

Many a joy that we held as nought,
Hopes, but never the great fulfilment,
Love, but never the love we sought.

Now we must part from home and friend.

We have treasures of youth to spend:
Braver ventures, fairer maidens
Wait for us where the old ways end.

Now for the quest unknown, untried,

Now for the path with none to guide.
Dawns that glimmer on new horizons,
Starlit camps on the mountain side.

For our dreams remain, and the wonders flown

From the world that we knew and called our own,
Are ours to follow by shores uncharted,
Ours to seek in a land unknown;

Dreams that give to the thing life shows,

What the sky gives earth, when the evening glows
On the lonely hills, and the distant places
Blossom in gold and purple and rose.

Spake to us voices of scorn and ruth:

“He who follows the dreams of youth,
He who seeks for an outworn wonder
Flies himself from the whips of truth.”
“For yours is nought but the hunter’s zest;—
Your love but love of the unpossessed.
Is the world God filled with the light not fairer
Than all the dreams of your soul’s unrest?”

Ah no! the world that God designed

He shows us in dreams, but leaves mankind
To shape to His plan. The goal He gave,
But the path to the goal ’tis ours to find.

No meaner plan than our dream unrolls

Can ever again content our souls;
The wonder fades from the paths around us,
Our faith remains in the unseen goals.

The wonder outlasts, the goals exist;

The beauty abides, but the way we missed;
And a mile may open the way we looked for
A turn may lead to the longed-for tryst.
 THE ROAD INTO THE WORLD

We travelled by an old and beaten road,

But everything we saw was strange and new:
Each ripple of the mountain stream that flowed
Beside us, every drop of sunlit dew
That filled the flowers that on the wayside grew,
The laughter of the south-west wind at play
Along its own untrodden path of blue,
All made the earth forget its yesterday,
And with their own youth touched that old and beaten way.

They told us that our road would lead at last

Into the world,—not that which once was spread
Before our childhood’s dream, unknown and vast,
But one which man had fashioned in its stead.
This world lay now before us, and we sped
To drink its wonders, counting not the cost.
Our endless pathways to their ends had led;
The bounds of our unbounded we had crossed;
The unknown way was found, but our old world was lost.

We had exchanged our infinite domains,

The undiscovered regions of our quest,
For the round earth wherein no sea remains
Uncharted, and no land is unpossessed;
But still our hearts were filled with the old zest
To travel and adventure and explore:
The unknown called us, we could find no rest
Till, by those paths which men had trod before,
We found the world they found and bore the loads they bore.

With every soul that on the earth is born

The whole creation is made young again;
And all the paths that pilgrim feet have worn
Are new for those who follow —every stain
 Are new for those who follow, every stain
That marred them is washed out by sun and rain,
And verdure fresh makes all their borders sweet.
So on that road of bygone joy and pain,
With the day’s new-born flowers about our feet,
We sought an ancient world grown young our youth to greet.

And pleasant of that world it was to think,

And all that we had heard in song and lore
Of old grey cities on the ocean’s brink,
Where to their anchorage the great ships bore
Bales from the Orient, and golden store
From the far south, and, dark and grim and tall,
Behind the dreaming masts rose floor on floor,
Warehouse and granary, and over all
Loomed some great tower or dome of Mary or of Paul.

The vanished regions of our old surmise

We mourned not now, for eager we had grown
To read the record of the centuries,
And enter the great kingdoms of the known.
Ay! better than the unexplored and lone
We deemed that world in which the human heart
Was written, where mankind had built and sown,
And fought for truth and love, and taken part
In the eighth day’s creation—God-inspired Art.

And now our island earth, our bounded home

Took new dimensions,—Time transfigured Space;
And we beheld vast realms through which to roam
Within the limits of our dwelling-place.
Dim pathways of the past we turned to pace,
And far receding vistas of the years
Opened old wonderlands; ’twas ours to trace
The labyrinths of love, the vales of tears,
And toward the unknown future march as pioneers.

Along the borders of that beaten way

Was many a landmark of man’s mortal fate;
 Was many a landmark of man s mortal fate;
But hope was ever written in decay,
And simple things interpreted the great.
A charm was in the wild flowers to translate
Death’s ruth, a benediction in the stone
Of ruined abbey walls to consecrate
The skies that roofed them, and to link the lone
Illimitable paths of heaven with our own.

But for far heavenly paths we had no care

While still that road before us was untried,
And the world called to us its joys to share,
Its lore to read, its destinies to guide.
Our hearts were filled with a terrestrial pride;
We loved our world and gloried in the fame
Of those who in its service lived and died,
Who fought and laboured to create its claim
Amid the countless spheres to hold an honoured name.

To other gods than ours the past has knelt,

And creed and cause may sever us or bind;
But here upon our common road we felt
The bond of bonds that links all humankind,—
Man’s pilgrim fellowship. Through rain and wind,
In sunshine and beneath the starry deep,
There is one goal for all the world to find,
A sacred hope to guard, a watch to keep,
And in a little while the comradeship of sleep.
 THE COUNTRY OVER THE HILL

It was evening, and we came to the country over the hill,

A valley of ancient homes and fields with shadowy trees.
The south-west wind was soft with the breath of the south-west seas;
Our unknown pathway followed the wandering song of a rill.

Flowers we knew in the homeland bordered the unknown way;

Things we had known and loved in the paths we had left behind,
Only these we found,—the song of the south-west wind,
Gold of the evening, rose of the sunset, twilight grey.

But the way, the way was unknown, and each turn of the way unguessed,
And the spell of the unforeseen transfigured the things we knew,
And filled the whispering woods and the flowers that hung in the dew,
And dreamed on the darkening hills and the roselit cloud in the west.

Twilight fell on the land, and clear against vistas dim

Near things stood large,—the towers of ancient elms
Loomed on glimmering fields, dark keeps of shadowy realms;
And the first stars shone in the eastern sky on the upland’s rim.

One by one around us, golden lights in the dusk

Glowed in many a window of unseen cottage and farm:
And sweet through the cool of the dew came ripples of air still warm
From the shelter of old walled gardens that breathed of honey and musk.

We came to a little village and our rest at the long day’s close:
The stars shone over the street where the folk were lingering still;
The stars looked down on the stars in the dark pool under the mill;
The infinite deeps of the heaven were touched with the earth’s repose.

Bright heavenly tracts outshone; but never a way so sweet

As a homely path on the earth where the wild flowers hid in the dew,
And a girl went home through the fields, and the darkness thrilled with a
clue
That linked the loneliest star with the flowers she touched with her feet.

And pleasant it was to rest awhile in that old-world nook,

And dream of the unknown way and the country over the hill,
While the stars shone down on our beds, and the village street was still,
And sleep came over the fields in the wandering song of the brook.
 YOUTH AND LOVE

Over our pilgrim fellowship there came

A change, and though our road was still the same
Our dreams divided us, and visions fair
Filled us with longings that we could not share.
All that once called us to the unknown quest
Was hidden now within a maiden’s breast;
All that was far away and wild and sweet
Shone in her eyes and blossomed at her feet.
She was our wonderland, our golden shore,
The unknown world we travelled to explore,
Our goal, not one far distant and unseen,
But near, and with no barrier between
To check us or to hide it from our sight,
Save our own hesitation or her flight.
Across the beaten road she passed; she led
Through trackless regions, beckoned us or fled,
We knew not which; we knew not if her face
Appealed for help, or called us to the chase.
Strife and confusion to our lives she brought,
But life itself in lovelier hues she wrought.
She was our spirit’s guide, our passion’s lure:
She was the world’s undoing and its cure.

Of this enchantment, of the wild pursuit

That woke in us the errant knight or brute,
Of this confusion that upon us fell,
Some do not speak, and none the same thing tell;
And some were lost or made themselves a track
Through lands unknown, and some at last came back,—
One with a new light shining in his eyes,
One with the burden of his memories,
One with his blood for new pursuit on fire,
One weary seeking for his heart’s desire;
A d h b ht b k t th b t d
And one who brought back to the beaten road
A song of love that lightened half our load.

Comrades we met again; but though the way

Was still the same, and though the night and day,
The flowers at our feet, the stars above,
Shone as before,—the mystery of love
Filled heaven and earth with something new and sweet
And wild and sorrowful and incomplete,
And once more called us to the unknown quest
To seek the unfulfilled and unpossessed.
 THE SPIRIT AND THE FLESH

She tempted him; for such was Nature’s plan,

Who, thinking of the fruit, the flowers arrayed,
And seeking for the surest guardian
Of life to be, gave beauty to the maid.

He courted her with glowing flatteries,

With praises that he then deemed nought but truth,
While all he sought seemed hidden in her eyes,
And all the joy of earth was in her youth.

He gave her the brief homage of desire;

She gave him what a maid but once can give;
She lit, but could not keep alight, love’s fire;
They parted, they had still their lives to live.

And many a merry bout with many a lass

Had he, until a wiser course he saw,
And wedded a fair lady of his class
Who bore him children sanctioned by the law.

She kept her secret and her love of life,

And, wistful sometimes when that episode
Her dreams recalled, became an honest wife,
And shared with a good man the common load.

II
Another of our comrades, in those days
When wisdom has for youth no argument,
And conscience on him no commandment lays
That can prevail against a maid’s consent,—

He also found that ’twas the hot pursuit

And not the maiden that inspired his zest;
And other fairer maids of fleeter foot
Called him from one too easily possessed.

But she was not of those who make the slip

And miss the fall, like many a merry dame:
She felt the tightening of dishonour’s grip,
Still loving him who brought on her the shame.

And one day walking by a river bank,

He found a little group of villagers
Standing beside a body, dead and dank,—
And when he looked the face he saw was hers.

The conduct of these comrades was akin,

Though the world read it in the sequel’s light:
The one through life recalled a pleasant sin;
Remorse pursued the other day and night.

And, are you Nature’s weakling instrument,

Your fortune may be such as prompts a laugh
Among good fellows; or the fire she lent
May burn into your soul an epitaph.

III